Pope reaches out to Orthodox flock

But Al Qaeda message demonstrates tensions over his trip to Turkey

ISTANBUL — Pope Benedict XVI journeyed to the ancient capital of Byzantium on Wednesday and celebrated a moment of prayer with the spiritual leader of the world's 250 million Orthodox Christians, a gesture of conciliation aimed at healing the 1,000-year breach between Roman Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox churches.

Visiting the Patriarchal Church of St. George in what is today the bustling Turkish commercial capital of Istanbul, Pope Benedict stood with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I and urged both sides "to work for full unity of Catholics and Orthodox."

The two leaders then held private talks.

Earlier in the day, at a shrine to the Virgin Mary in Ephesus, a town that dates to biblical times, the pope celebrated an open-air mass for a few hundred souls.

"I have wanted to convey my personal love and spiritual closeness, together with that of the universal church, to the Christian community here in Turkey, a small minority which faces many challenges and difficulties daily," the pope told the congregation.

He also mentioned the murder of a Catholic priest in Turkey in February during the turmoil that followed the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

"Let us sing joyfully, even when we're tested by difficulties and dangers as we have learned from the fine witness given by the Rev. Andrea Santoro, whom I am pleased to recall in this celebration," the pope said.

Santoro was shot by a Turkish teenager in Trabzon, a city on the Black Sea.

There was a further reminder Wednesday of the tensions between Christians and Muslims when several militant Islamic Web sites posted a message from Al Qaeda denouncing the pope's visit as a "crusader campaign" against Islam and an attempt to "extinguish the burning ember of Islam" in Turkey.

If Tuesday, the first day of the pope's visit to Turkey, was spent mainly on political matters--meetings in Ankara with the prime minister, the president and the government's top Muslim official--his journey to Istanbul begins the theological phase.

For Pope Benedict, reconciliation between the two ancient branches of Christianity is the great unfinished piece of business from the reign of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II.

As the first Slavic pontiff, Pope John Paul II saw it as his special destiny to heal the 11th Century schism. He spoke often of Christianity's two main branches--East and West--as two great lungs that provided oxygen to a single body.

And having played a decisive role in bringing religious freedom to the communist lands of Eastern Europe, the late pope was convinced that the time was right for an overture to the patriarchs of the Eastern churches.

But the Vatican's first attempt to seize the opportunity presented by the collapsing Soviet Union "was badly mishandled by the pope's subordinates," according to George Weigel, a Catholic commentator who has written books on both popes.

A Vatican undertaking in the early 1990s to establish dioceses for Latin-rite Catholics in Russia angered Orthodox bishops who said they were never consulted.

Other overtures snubbed

The Orthodox hierarchy, long suspicious of Catholic proselytizing, feared that this was yet another example of papal poaching on its territory. Patriarch Alexy II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, snubbed all of Pope John Paul II's subsequent overtures.

But Pope John Paul II kept trying. In a 1995 papal letter, "Orientale Lumen"--"Eastern Light"--he wrote that the Roman Catholic Church saw the Orthodox as "a symbol of the Lord who comes again."

"We cannot forget them," Pope John Paul II wrote, "not only because we love them as brothers and sisters redeemed by the same Lord but also because a holy nostalgia for the centuries lived in full communion of faith and charity urges us and reproaches us for our sins and mutual misunderstandings."

The low point came in April 2001, when Pope John Paul II visited Greece at the invitation of the country's president--a visit opposed by the Greek Orthodox Church. Thousands turned out in Athens to protest his presence.

But the world has changed profoundly since then, a point underscored by Wednesday's message from Al Qaeda.

"I think what is happening now, and for Bartholomew in particular, is that there is an awareness that the Orthodox world is a tiny speck afloat in the tsunami of the Islamic world," said Weigel, a fellow at Washington's Ethics and Public Policy Center.

"It needs a tether to the West, and that is what the pope is offering," he said.

Turkey is officially a secular state, but its Islamic roots are deep and the 100,000 or so Christians here lead a precarious existence.

Role of Bartholomew I

As patriarch of Constantinople, the historic capital of Christian Byzantium, Bartholomew I is seen as "first among equals" by the various Orthodox churches. But for reasons having more to do with politics than religion, the Turkish government acknowledges him only as spiritual leader of the local Greek Orthodox community, which numbers about 2,000.

There have been other restrictions as well, most notably the closing of the country's only Greek Orthodox seminary in 1971.

Pope Benedict, who will visit Istanbul's famous Blue Mosque on Thursday, is expected to challenge Turkey's political and religious leaders to give Christian minorities the same kind of freedom that Muslims demand for themselves in the West.